


Not Ready

by lurker_writes



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-29 20:41:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16751194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurker_writes/pseuds/lurker_writes
Summary: A SOLDIER is prepared for his first deployment.





	Not Ready

**Author's Note:**

> Putting this up on AO3 before tumblr disappears into the void of internets past.

There was blood all over his main laboratory. There was often blood all over all of his laboratories, but Hojo was accustomed to knowing when and how it got there, as he usually caused and then witnessed the rampaging specimen of the hour. Taking into account the faint blue-green glow from the more shadowed puddles, and the lingering stench – simultaneously chemical and rotten vegetal in nature – there could only be one culprit.

This knowledge did not make the blood _less_ concerning.

He turned a corner into one of the side rooms, meant for smaller or more delicate procedures. There he found the source of the pressing biohazard containment problem, neither small nor delicate.

He cleared his throat.

Sephiroth looked up from the freely bleeding gash in his right calf, an adhesive strip which would accomplish _utterly nothing_ clutched clumsily in his blood-slick hands. At least a couple dozen more had failed to close the wound and either clung, useless, to its edges or had fallen into the growing puddle on the previously sterile floor.

“They did the wrong arm,” Sephiroth said, as if that explained everything.

And in a way, it did – not his words but his voice, smooth and clear and still just a little too high for the body that had been made to outgrow it. Sephiroth was nearing six feet tall, and beginning to broaden out with muscle. Sephiroth appeared to be about sixteen, an age at which any idiot should know better. Sephiroth had just passed his twelfth birthday three months ago, unremarked upon and uncelebrated except for a note on his reams and reams of charts.

…Sephiroth was supposed to receive the last in a series of injections today, because Shinra wanted his new weapon to go to war tomorrow.

’ _They did the wrong arm._ ’

Hojo crossed the room, careful to sidestep the slick of blood and mako pooling under the worktop Sephiroth sat on. He pulled a towel from a drawer and resisted the urge to press it against his face. He pressed it into Sephiroth’s hands instead.

“Clean that up properly and hold it. And perhaps while you’re doing that,” he added lightly, “you can explain how a routine injection caused a six-inch gash in a completely unrelated limb.”

Sephiroth scowled.

He never made his disdain for Hojo any kind of secret. Once, that had translated into refusing to appear weak in front of his lab-coated nemesis. Sephiroth, though, was clever; it took him very little time to realize that Hojo’s job depended on _his_ strength and ability as much as his own life did. From that moment on, he took a truly excessive amount of satisfaction in displaying his pain and inability for Hojo’s detriment. No one demanded perfection of him more; no one would ever see less.

There was certainly no perfection on display now. Sephiroth let the towel fall to the floor without ever trying to hold it.

He presented his left arm instead. It was reddened in patches, and swollen. “They did the wrong arm,” he repeated, sounding as young and petulant as he truly was. “I couldn’t hold my sword.”

Hojo grabbed another towel. He knelt and pressed it over the wound himself. These pants were going to be stained forever. “You did this to yourself?”

“I just dropped it!” Sephiroth snapped, and his voice broke with his temper. “They wouldn’t listen, they did the wrong arm and made me do drills anyway! I’m not perfect, I made a mistake, I dropped my sword on my leg. Are you happy?”

Hojo was not happy. He was rather impressed that Sephiroth got all that out in about one breath. He was not, however, anything resembling pleased with the situation.

“Lay down. This needs to be put up to stop the bleeding.”

It was a mark of how unwell Sephiroth must have felt that he immediately – if stiffly – complied, with not one snide comment made.

“I’ll tape it closed and then apply a cure,” Hojo continued, while picking failed closures off of the bloodied leg.

“I was doing that,” Sephiroth grumbled.

Hojo raised his eyebrows, and let the ruined strip in his hand flutter to the floor. “It was clearly going well.”

Sephiroth crossed his arms and was mulishly silent.

He continued to be silent, while Hojo washed up and _properly_ treated the laceration of idiocy, other than the occasional muted whimper of pain. In fact, when Hojo glanced up from applying a quick gauze dressing, just until he got the materia, he realized Sephiroth was dozing on the table. In a normal person, that would be cause for concern, but… Sephiroth would live.

It could almost be taken for granted at this point: Sephiroth would live.

He looked much younger when sleeping, closer to his twelve years. His head was half lolling off the table. Hojo cupped his palm around his crown and pushed it back up. There were no witnesses to his moment of weakness – he let his hand linger there, against Sephiroth’s soft hair. Sephiroth turned into the touch.

“I hate you,” he murmured sleepily.

Hojo allowed himself a small, bitter smile. He scrubbed through the top of Sephiroth’s hair, where the cowlicks defied gravity just like…

“Yes,” he sighed. “I know you do.”

He needed to get that cure. And then, perhaps, he would check the boy’s records and see who delivered today’s injections. Into his sword arm, the day before deployment. Unforgivable. Now they would have to delay, and keep him in observation. Another three months at least, to be sure. ShinRa would just have to wait. Nothing to be done about it.

He wasn’t ready.

…He wasn’t ready.


End file.
